Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Evan left Monday to go down to Tampa to sit for the Bar Exam. I knew that I was going to miss him, but I also thought that I would have fun getting things done around the house while he was gone. Little did I know that the weather was going to conspire against me to make it no fun to be at home alone. Yes, I will readily admit that bad weather scares me, and that I am also afraid of the dark – sort of. I have no idea how I am going to teach my son that the dark is not scary when I have a hard time convincing myself of that very thing.

It all started out innocently enough. On the way home from picking up the baby from school, I decided to catch up with my friend Diva on the phone – I mean, it is a thirty minute ride home now after all, so I may as well use the time to good purpose, right? So I dial up Miss Diva and we start chatting about this and that. Turns out – she’s actually getting ready to move into her house finally (after something life fifty-five gazillion years). But she started telling me about the sounds she had heard while she was out at her property Sunday night and about how creepy it was to hear some poor little animal screeching in the night because some other larger, more agile animal was killing it – murderizing it is actually what she called it. She then proceeds to tell me (in detail) about how Wayne told her that this was a common thing to hear when you have a bit of land or live in the boonies and about how she even walked out of the house when she heard it happening because she thought she could save someone’s life (not realizing yet that it was an animal). I freaked out as she was telling me these things because I have this tendency to make stories seem worse than they are in my head – so that by the time I actually got home and pulled into the garage, I was somewhat afraid that as the garage door was slowly lowering to the ground something would dash in under the door and try to murderize me and the baby! It was an irrational fear, I know. But still – until the door clanged against the ground I was holding my breath a bit.

I managed to make it inside with the baby in tow, but the weather had decided to grow gloomy and ominous on me and I quickly ran from window to window shutting the curtains so that the bad weather boogies couldn’t get me either. The baby is probably convinced that I’m a little nutty now, but he didn’t let on if he thought that or not. I was able to get him his dinner and bath without incident, and when I put him down for night-night he didn’t even make a peep. But I think I kind of wanted him to so that he could keep me company until night-night time for me. Sigh. Is that what I’m reduced to now? Wanting an 11 month old to keep me company so the boogie man can’t come? Jeesh!

The next morning I had to take the garbage down to the curb – but it was still dark outside because I have to leave at the butt-crack of dawn now to get to work on time – and I was still afraid the boogie man was going to jump out of the shadows and murderize me. Somehow, I managed to summon the strength and will power to open the garage door and drag the can down to the curb at super lightening speed. I’m quite certain my new neighbors saw this fiasco and now think I’m touched in the head in some way – but oh well. The boogie man didn’t manage to catch me so I’m okay with being thought of as “that” woman in the neighborhood.

So last night the weather wasn’t as bad as it was Monday night, but we got home later than the night before because we had been in a meeting until 8:30. This time the baby was already asleep so I didn’t even have him to keep me company while I did the mad dash to the curb to pull up the can and around the house making sure the windows were all still closed. I put him to bed and did manage to keep myself occupied shopping on Amazon until I managed to get sleepy enough to fall asleep. We made it through two nights without getting murderized, but I certainly am glad that Evan will be home tonight! Who would ever have thought that I’d turn out to be such a whimp?

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Some days are just destined to be beautiful. For me, today was one of those days. I got a call from my best friend yesterday telling me that she, her mom and one of the other of my “musketeers” would be calling on us to see the new house today. So I stayed up late last night doing the baby’s laundry and sorting out the clothes he can no longer wear. I thought I’d get around to cleaning the house a bit since we were going to have company, but I didn’t quite make it to that part. Evan decided he needed to day to study for the bar exam, so he was going to leave early in the morning to head over to campus to study. The baby had woken up at 3 am so he and I were snuggling together when I heard Evan getting ready to leave. I got up, made the baby a bottle (his last bottle ever by the way as we weaned him completely off them today), kissed my dear husband and sent him on his way and then settled in for a day at the house entertaining friends.

I finished up the laundry while the baby was playing with his books and the little cup thingies Miss Donna had given him at Christmas. We were listening to some music and enjoying chattering at each other and basically just chilling – which is something we never really get to do. Keli and Olivia got to the house first while the baby was having his lunch. I can’t believe how big Olivia has gotten – she’s only five, but you’d think from how grown up her speech is that she was six or seven! We talked for a bit and enjoyed each other’s company. Finally De and her mommy showed up – they are always late for everything because they just run on a different time zone! But we just got to relax and catch up with things that have been going on in each other’s lives – and we got to look at Keli and Marc’s wedding and honeymoon books – I’d forgotten how beautiful Keli’s wedding was!

While we were talking, Keli noticed what she thought was a chicken in our backyard. Turns out, Keli’s “chicken” was really an enormous hawk. We all had a nice little laugh at how she confused the two – you’d have to know Keli to really understand just how funny this was. Apparently since we live in the boonies now, farm animals are expected! But her little discovery led us to go outside – we’ve lived here for almost a month now and I haven’t taken the baby into the backyard yet! But we had fun exploring and the baby even got to chasse the doggie a bit – though I will admit my 14 year old doggie was not thrilled at being chased by an energetic one year old!!!

After a bit of talking all of the girls decided it was time for lunch, so we packed up and headed over to Beef O’Brady’s for some yummy victuals. It was just so nice to have such a relaxing time with my girlfriends. We were cracking up at how funny the baby was being and at Miss Olivia declaring that he was her baby now! She’s so ready for a little sibling! After lunch Keli and Olivia had to head out so Olivia could go to her Granny’s house. Mom and De were going to look at a new piece of land near De’s new house, and the baby was rubbing his eyes because it was past his nap time. He hugged on Monkey McGee for a minute before turning over and falling sound asleep. I got to talk to my aunt for a few minutes and then I even fell asleep in the recliner while I was gazing out on the backyard. The baby and I napped for about an hour and a half – I hardly ever get to take a nap on the weekend!

We were so well rested after our naps that we decided to venture into town to meet my aunt for dinner. The baby loves seeing his grandma! We had such a nice evening together – the baby flirted with five different tables of people at Cabo’s. He was super intent on watching these two younger men in their twenties – even the guys noticed him watching them. I said I thought he was trying to hang out with the guys for a bit! Ha! Then when they left, he started goo-gooing with two younger women at another booth. An older couple was having a bit of fun with his antics and even a foursome of biker-types had a little fun making faces at him. It was really just such a fun evening!

We ended up stopping off at Wal Mart on the way home to get some more clothes hangers for his armoire – but really I ended up buying him shoes, some bubbles and a pair of socks for me too. When I got home Evan hopped down on the floor and started playing so sweetly with the baby. I even had a package waiting on me from Wyoming. I love, love, love getting little packages from Wyoming because I know they have little things from my favorite little girl! Miss Emma had made me a card that said “I love you” and her mommy crocheted the most beautiful little heart garland strand for me! I put the heart garland on my memories table and the card in proudly displayed on the fridge for now but will go into a frame as soon as I get one for it.

The baby had his nighttime milk and we rocked for a bit before he toddled over to his daddy to give him kisses before going night night. I love watching the two of them play together. So I scooped little man up to put him to bed and just hugged him and told him how much I love him and he hugged me back so sweetly. We could hear him chatting away to Monkey McGee until he nodded off to sleep. And then Evan headed off to bed and I surfed the web for a bit listening to my favorite versions of One Love and Ilo Ferriera’s Lifeline.

It’s so easy to remember how blessed I am on days like today. I need to remember how to hold on to the sweetness of days like today to get me through the days when it’s hard to remember how good I have it.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Lately I've realized that I spend more of my time spinning my wheels than I do actually getting anywhere, and the frustration I have felt as a result of all of this wheel spinning has seeped into every aspect of my life. This ever present frustration is causing me to feel stress over teensy little things that really should never even make it to my "real" radar. So I've finally decided that it's time for this to change.

I really do have a lot of neat attributes that make me an interesting person - but the AHDH chaos of my day-to-day life makes me hide these things beneath the ever-growing pile of "to-do's" on my work-a-day white board list. In fact, most people who meet me now never see the witty, happy, free-spirited person that I was just a few short years ago. Instead, what they meet is the hunched over, coffee gulping, finger tapping, leg bouncing, gotta get it done monster that took over my former self's body. I mean seriously, some days there just isn't enough Adderall in the whole world to calm the inner monster in me down.

I remember there was a time when I had oodles of time on my hands, and I had no regrets over how I spent that time. If I decided I wanted to go out after work and dance and drink until my legs or my guts couldn't take it anymore I made no bones about doing that very thing. There were days when I swear I wasn't even sobered up yet when it was time to go to work again - but those days are long gone and have since been replaced by the incessant need to constantly be doing something productive. Little projects around the house were the first things that started vampiring my time away. A flower garder here, a painted wall there...

Before long, it was crafting. I needed to have some outlet to make me feel like my time was being well spent. But I'm really not that creative when it comes to arts and crafts - I can copy other's ideas, but really I don't have any of my own. So crafting started to become more of a drag than an outlet for free time. Yet... somehow the lure of Michael's or Joanne's still called to me. Trust me. If you look at any of my closets, you will see that I likely have thousands of dollars worth of crafting equipment. I even lent my Cricuit to a lady in one of my sewing classes and forgot about it. It's a sickness I think.

Crafting led to baking. If I can't do something with paper, I can definitely do it with sugar and butter and flour. I am a great cook and I love to bake... so naturally when I decided to get married I had to learn how to make my own wedding cake. And here I went again... hundreds if not a thousand or two dollars later, I have pans and gadgets and gizmos - yet since I can no longer fit into my cute clothes, baking is off limits to me. Since I can't bake - maybe I should sew?

I signed up for sewing classes and like the class suck up made 8 quilts where everone else was lucky to have finished one. Now I own a sewing machine and all sorts of gadgets and gizmos and fabric galore, but I haven't finished a sewing project in months.

So here's my deal - I've decided that after this month I will start working on my projects again. Why am I giving myself the rest of the month off? Because we need to finish moving out of the old house so that I can clean and repair it to rent it out. I think it'll take three more weekends of little projects and it'll be ready to pawn off on some other poor unsuspecting schmuck! bwahahahahaha.

Then all the gadgets and gizmos at my new house better be prepared for the return of the old me! White board or no... I will get these projects out of my head for once and for all!

About Me

I define myself by my motherhood first and foremost. My children are definitely the part of my life of which I am the most proud. It took a long time for those babies to come to me - and as a foster-turned-adoptive parent, I can tell you that it was a hard fought battle keeping them safe while they navigated the system of care. After seeing what happens in dependency through their cases and the other dozen babies we had over the last five years, I have become a fierce advocate for the needs and rights of children in Florida's foster care system. I am wife to my handsome, hunky, hottie-professor recovery chief, Evan and friend to most all who meet me. My oldest son and I have recently taken up taekwondo - and that journey itself has been an eye opener! Welcome to my little piece of the internet, enjoy my ramblings, take them with a grain of salt and have fun!